Strategic plan maps out city’s future

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Last year was a busy one for city of Maricopa staff and council and now, with an improved and upgraded strategic plan to guide them, the stage is set for next three years.

“This helps to give us guidance in what council wants us to get accomplished,” said Nicole Dailey, assistant to the city manager. The strategic plan was an idea brought to Maricopa by City Manager Kevin Evans when he was hired more than two years ago.

“We continue to improve this foundational document to ensure we have the best framework possible for guiding growth in the community,” Evans said. The document lays out the goals of council and city staff in five areas: economic sustainability, quality of life, transportation connectivity, managing the future, and public safety.

The public safety portion is new to this year’s plan and includes goals such as enhancing service, addressing communication system issues, evaluating cost effectiveness and building organizational relationships.

“This is one of the final pieces,” Evans said. However, it is not the only change made to the document.

Each section has been reviewed over the past several months at a series of strategic planning sessions and vague, fluffy language was removed and replaced with more concrete goals, according to Evans.

Accomplished items were removed from the plan, and new goals were added. Those new goals include establishing an annual summit with Electrical District No. 3, launching a redevelopment district in the Seven Ranches area, and more. While not all of the items in the strategic plan can be addressed, it is a helpful tool for city staff when structuring the budget and hiring a youth coordinator.

In addition to the improvements and additions to the strategic plan, city staff rolled out a new monitoring system to make it possible to easily track the progress on all of the plan’s goals. Each four months, council plans to meet and revise the plan to ensure progress is being made on the goals and new issues are not being ignored.

However, since the plan is essentially complete, Evans said this process should now be much faster than in the past.
 

2010-2013 City of Maricopa Strategic Plan

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